Heraldry In Urban Society

Download or read book Heraldry in Urban Society written by Marcus Meer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-19 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heraldry is often seen as a traditional prerogative of the nobility. But it was not just knights, princes, kings, and emperors who bore coats of arms to show off their status in the Middle Ages. The merchants and craftsmen who lived in cities, too, adopted coats of arms and used heraldic customs, including display and destruction, to underline their social importance and to communicate political messages. Medieval burgesses were part of a fascination with heraldry that spread throughout pre-modern society and looked at coats of arms as honoured signs of genealogy and history. Heraldry in Urban Society analyses the perceptions and functions of heraldry in medieval urban societies by drawing on both English- and German-language sources from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. Despite variations that point to socio-political differences between cities (and their citizens) in the relatively centralized monarchy of medieval England and the more independent-minded urban governments found in the less closely connected Holy Roman Empire, urban heraldry emerges as a versatile and ubiquitous means of multimedia visual communication that spanned medieval Europe. Urban heraldic practices defy assumptions about clearly demarcated social practices that belonged to 'high'/'noble' as opposed to 'low'/'urban' culture. Townspeople's perceptions of coats of arms paralleled those of the nobility, as they readily interpreted and carefully curated them as visual expressions of identity. These perceptions allowed townspeople of all ranks, as well as noble outsiders, to use heraldry and its display - along with its defacement and destruction - in manuscripts, spaces (such as town houses, public monuments, halls, and churches), and performances (like processions and joyous entries) to address perennial problems of urban society in the Middle Ages. The coats of arms of burgesses, guilds, and cities were communicative means of individual and collective representation, social and political legitimization, conducting and resolving conflicts, and the pursuit of elevated status in the urban hierarchy. Likewise, heraldic communication negotiated the all-important relationship between the city and wider, extramural society - from the commercial interests of citizens to their collective ties to the ruler.

Download or read book Illuminating the Roman D'Alexandre written by Mark Cruse and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2011 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Survey of one of the most important surviving medieval manuscripts reveals much of its contemporary cultural, literary and social milieu. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264 is one of the most famous and most sumptuous illuminated manuscripts of the entire Middle Ages. Completed in 1344 in Tournai, in what is now Belgium, the manuscript preserves the fullest version of the interpolated Old French Roman d'Alexandre (Romance of Alexander the Great), and some of the most vivid illustrations of any medieval romance, ranking amongst the greatest achievements of the illuminator's art, its borders in particular offering a panorama of medieval society and imagination. A celebration of courtliness, a commemoration of urban chivalry, a mirror for the prince instructing in the arts of rule, and a meditation on crusade, it manifests the extraordinary richness and creativity of late medieval manuscript culture. This study examines the manuscript as a monumental expression of the beliefs and social practices of its day, placing it in its historical and artistic context; it also analyzes its later reception in England, where the addition of a Middle English Alexander poem and of Marco Polo's Voyages reflects changing concepts of language, historiography, and geography. Mark Cruse is Assistant Professor of French, School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University.

Download or read book Wildlife Conservation Society Birds of Brazil written by Robert S. Ridgely and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world and is one of the planet's richest places for bird diversity, especially when it comes to the number of endemic species. Brazil's Atlantic Forest region is one of the most dazzling of all. Immediately surrounding São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, this area of Brazil is also a relatively accessible area to birders from around the world. In the Birds of Brazil Field Guides, the Wildlife Conservation Society brings together a top international team to do justice to the incredible diversity of Brazilian birds. This second guide presents 927 bird species, 863 illustrated, that occur in just the southeastern Atlantic Forest biome (Mata Atlântica in Portuguese). Of these species, 140 are endemic and 105 near endemic to just this region; 83 of these are threatened. Modern and compact, this field guide provides illustrations of unparalleled quality, key field marks, and regional range maps to facilitate easy recognition of all species normally occurring in this vibrant and critically important area of Brazil.

Download or read book Day & Section Hikes Pacific Crest Trail: Washington written by Adrienne Schaefer and published by Wilderness Press. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Washington is a dynamic state to say the least. It's amazing how quickly the landscape can change; fires rage in the summer, closing trails and burning huge swaths of forest, bridges get washed away in massive floods, and avalanches knock trees over like matchsticks, taking out entire sections of trail with them. The second edition of Day and Section Hikes Pacific Crest Trail: Washington, by local author Adrienne Schaefer provides hikers with updated trail and road conditions, places to visit in the great mountain towns surrounding them and information on some of the major environmental events that have happened over the past four years, which includes the largest wildfire season in Washington State history. The second edition also includes five new hikes, one of which travels along the glaciated flanks of Glacier Peak through a breathtaking section of the PCT that was closed from 2003-2011. With new maps, photos, and updated trail information, this guide highlights sections of the PCT in the Columbia River Gorge, Gifford Pinchot National Forest with views of Mount Adams, Mount Rainier National Park, and Pasayten wildernesses. The guide includes ratings for scenery, trail condition, difficulty, solitude, and accessibility for children. In addition, it has driving directions, GPS waypoints, and permit and fee instructions.

Download or read book Houses and Domestic Space in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Hospitaller Malta written by George A. Said-Zammit and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Houses and Domestic Space in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Hospitaller Malta is a study concerned with a wide spectrum of early modern dwellings in Malta, ranging from palazzi and affluent residences to peasant dwellings, troglodyte houses, and hovels. The multifaceted approach adopted in this book allows houses and domestic networks to be studied not only in terms of architecture and construction materials, but also as places of human habitation where house dwellers act, react and interact in different contexts and circumstances. Dwellings are places that permit different social and economic activities, whilst providing shelter and security to the household members. Through the available sources, the houses of Hospitaller Malta are analysed in terms of their spatial properties and how they generate privacy, interaction and communication, identity, accessibility, security, visibility, movement and encounters, and, equally important, how domestic space relates to gender roles, status, and class. This work, therefore, seeks to reach a deep and nuanced understanding of domestic space and how it relates to the islands’ history and the development of their society during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Download or read book The Heraldry of Lithuania written by Edmundas Rimša and published by Baltos Lankos. This book was released on 1998 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Social History of England, 1200–1500 written by Rosemary Horrox and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-10 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was life really like in England in the later Middle Ages? This comprehensive introduction explores the full breadth of English life and society in the period 1200-1500. Opening with a survey of historiographical and demographic debates, the book then explores the central themes of later medieval society, including the social hierarchy, life in towns and the countryside, religious belief, and forms of individual and collective identity. Clustered around these themes a series of authoritative essays develop our understanding of other important social and cultural features of the period, including the experience of war, work, law and order, youth and old age, ritual, travel and transport, and the development of writing and reading. Written in an accessible and engaging manner by an international team of leading scholars, this book is indispensable both as an introduction for students and as a resource for specialists.